


it's not a race (to the end)

by Pixielle



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: (lesbians in committed relationships just be like that idk what to tell you), Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chronic Pain, Established Relationship, F/F, Future Fic, Injury Recovery, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Stranger Things 3, Sapphic, casual nudity, happy pride!!!, i'm so glad i finished this before the end of pride woo, tons of 80s music references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixielle/pseuds/Pixielle
Summary: It's December 1987 and Billie looks back on the two and a half years since Starcourt, and the life she's built with Stephie, on one of her bad days.(All things considered, she's grateful.)(That also doesn't mean she's gotta be happy about the fucking searing pain wrapping around her ribs.)
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	it's not a race (to the end)

**Author's Note:**

> Music most listened to while working on this is Fade to Black by Metallica (always makes me emotional bc it reminds me so strongly of Billy ;_;) and California Love by 2pac. (Seriously.) I also reference Hysteria and Pyromania, the Def Leppard albums, as well as Journey's Greatest Hits (specifically Send Her My Love) in this, those are all also great vibes for this fic if you wanna get in the headspace.
> 
> Title and opening lyrics come from You're Somebody Else by Flora Cash, which is also so fucking sad but also strong /them/ vibes.

_I saw the part of you_  
_That only when you're older, you will see too_  
_You will see too_

_I held the better cards_  
_But every stroke of luck has gotta bleed through_  
_It's gotta bleed through_

_You held the balance of the time_  
_That only blindly I could read you_  
_But I could read you_

_It's like you told me_  
_Go forward slowly_

_It's not a race_  
_To the end_

===

It was December ‘87. 

In Chicago. 

Cold air was seeping underneath the crack of Billie’s door as she read her book, could feel it as it curled around her toes, but she didn’t want to tuck them under her comforter yet. The cold anchored her through the faint pain she was starting to feel, and her feet were dry as a desert this time of year here anyhow, no amount of Eucerin or even Vaseline could truly tackle them. And on top of it, she couldn’t get used to wearing socks to bed for the life of her anyways, no matter how much she tried they always ended up getting subconsciously shucked off in the night. On those nights, she dreamt of nothing but the texture of grit between her toes, salty seawater and Coronado sand grinding her down to nothing but baby soft skin.

Some nights, as she watched Stephie sit at her vanity and go through her skincare process (Billie long done after washing her face in the shower and slapping on some moisturizer), she often commented that there was no better exfoliator in the world than the beach. Stephie would just turn her head towards her and squint her eyes, smile growing wide as she shook her head and puffed out a laugh through her nose. One time, she finally commented on it.

“Ah yes, ye olde patented Billie Hargrove “Only exfoliate the bottoms of your feet” technique.” She waved the tube in her hand dramatically, as if she was some Home Shopping Network presenter. Billie pigeon-laughed as she stood and walked up behind Stephie, setting her chin on her shoulder. She caught her eyes in the mirror and stuck her tongue out between her teeth a bit to smile at her before wrapping her arms around the other’s middle.

“Then we’ve just gotta roll around in the sand for a while, sweetheart,” She turned her head towards her ear, still whispering as her hands slowly crept into position, feeling Stephie’s muscles tense under her. Stephie turned her head towards her slightly, breath shuddering faintly. “I’ll get you a full body exfoliation if that’s what you want.” 

At the conclusion of the final word, her hands dug into the other girl’s obliques and she tickled viciously, laughter quickly turning into whiney, breathless things. Billie only stopped because Stephie was inches from thwacking her shin against the vanity as she flailed, grabbing onto the soft knee in front of her and pulling it away from the furniture. 

“Woah, hey, it’s okay-” Stephie nodded assertively but immediately dove in to kiss her, hands coming up to cradle her face, whatever product that was in her hand having long been thrown to the floor in her laughing fit.

They ended up moving to the carpeted floor (with Billie perched on Stephie’s lap like it’s the most comfortable place to sit in their tiny apartment, which is probably true). Their breathing quickened as they kissed and kissed unrepentantly, breathing through their noses and intermittently sighing out into the soft, slick noises their lips were making. The moisture between them had turned overwhelmingly strawberry flavoured from the thick, nighttime lip balm Stephie had slathered onto her lips. 

Billie pulled back a bit to take a deeper breath, not able to hang in as long as she could before when her respiratory system was nearly perfect. But she didn’t hesitate to quickly turn her hips towards the other’s, pressing down to grind them together through their underwear. Stephie’s hands shook and paused where she had been working on finishing unbuttoning Billie’s deep red shirt, and her mouth parted to shakily breathe out a silent moan. Her own hips twitched up into Billie’s, before Billie said plainly into her ear, “So, I don’t have a beach for us to roll around on right now…”

And that made Stephie break into the biggest shit eating grin, grabbing onto Billie’s shoulders and quickly leaned back, pulling the other down to look over her where she laid. Breathlessly, “I think we’ll figure it out.”

Billie couldn’t hold in the awe she felt at how Stephie’s just below chin length dark brown hair fluttered around her for a moment before settling into a halo against their cream carpet. Stephie’s chest still heaved gently while she caught her breath, smiling as she panted and her breasts trembled with the impetus of it. When she looked up into Billie’s eyes, she looked so happy and so, so beautiful. A true angel. The sight of her reminded Billie of something that jackass Lord Byron would cream his pants over, a regular She Walks in Beauty in nothing more than pale blue high-waisted cotton underwear.

Stephie took a final deep breath before chuckling and shaking her head at the unhidden sincerity of Billie’s expression, “C’mere.” 

She pulled Billie more firmly down on top of her, Billie’s long hair curtaining down around them. Their chests pressed together and mouths met again, bodies lining up along each other perfectly. Stephie’s legs moved out wider to wrap around the other’s thighs, pressing them even closer. When they parted their mouths, their noses nudged against each other as they just exchanged air for a moment, not wanting to spare an inch. The energy that pinged around them at that moment made a shiver wrack up Billie’s spine from the intensity of it.

“I’m here.”

===

Billie wakes up in pain, 3 AM blaring at her in red from the alarm clock on her nightstand. It feels like her ribcage is being collapsed again. But it’s not, because she wouldn’t be conscious right now if that were the case. She knows it’s not. She’s already gone through that. A few times…

The pain is more… circular. Surrounding. Less piercing than it once was. But it’s there. 

She’d woken up crying, breathing too fast and too shallow to be productive. Billie just has to lay there, grit her teeth, and concentrate on breathing through her nose for a minute so she doesn’t scream. 

When she can, she ignores the drying tear trails on her cheeks and flops her hand over to the nightstand, flipping on the small, dim reading lamp. She knows from experience that the little light it gives off doesn’t bother Stephie a bit, once she’s out, she’s truly out. For the first few months they lived together, the pain had been so consistent and still unlearned in this environment that she did wake Stephie up occasionally. And that made her feel even worse.

Reaching down to the second drawer, (filled to the brim with what Stephie calls their “Billie Rescue Kit”), she turns on her side as much as she can before quietly hissing in pain. After a short moment of fishing around she manages to dig out some extra strength acetaminophen. That’s all the government will allow her anymore after being out of the hospital for over a year, those fuckers, all because of Reagan’s bullshit war on drugs (like everyone around him isn’t constantly downing tranqs at this exact moment to deal with his sorry ass). She swears every time her chronic pain flares up that one day she’s gonna go to that one nerd from high school and, without explanation, have him screenprint a t-shirt with, “I got my skeletal system rearranged because of the interdimensional hell demon they released and all I got to show for it was this shitty bottle of Tylenol.”

No one ever said she was patriotic, that’s for sure. They wouldn’t spy her frolicing around with fire crackers on Independence Day again like a good redblooded American girl any time soon.

She pops four capsules out of the bottle, swallows them dry in succession and continues to take her shallow, shaking breaths while waiting for them to kick in.

Really, what keeps her calm is listening to Stephie beside her. Staring up at the dark ceiling, watching the occasional car throw liney shadows across the bedroom, and listening to the even, strong pattern of her breathing. It’s like Stephie’s never had to question if she was going to get her next breath and that comforts Billie much more than she’d like to admit. 

Mostly because she’d never wish this pain on anyone, even her worst enemy. 

But Stephie’s breathiness next to her, it also reminds her of the clear, chilled over fall morning last year when she called Stephie “her little piggie” and grabbed onto her nose (because when she rolls over onto her back her breath evens out into a quiet snore that sounds awfully piglet like). Stephie’s face had curled up at that, and she shook her head into Billie’s hand, expression twisting. 

“Sure… I’m the piggie...” Stephie is lying beside her on the bed on her stomach, looking up at Billie as she fingers a few of the curls resting on top of Billie’s chest and pushes them up into the blonde’s face. “Like these aren’t more like pig’s tails than anything else on this _**planet**_.”

Her smile sprouted onto her face like cornflower in June as she finished her teasing, spreading all the way up to crinkle around her eyes. Billie had wanted to come up with a come back, but the desire flew away. If Stephie was a field of cornflower, then Billie was nothing more than a fuzzy ol bumblebee, searching for the sweetness around every corner. Billie ignored the metaphorical intimidating buzz and stinger that it implied, she’d already spent all of it and came out the other side alive so it probably wasn’t that good of a metaphor anyways.

===

The pills were working… somewhat. 

The pain had lessened enough for Billie to twist to grab her heating pad from where it sat alongside their bed frame. She tucked it along her front under the duvet, cranking it up to high with the clicking twist of a dial.

It was a fancy electric one gifted to her by Hopper early last Spring when she was finally cleared to live independently. The cover was a medium, sunny yellow with tiny blue flowers, and it made her smile that it so obviously was something that Joyce Byers had picked out at Hopper’s request when he didn’t know how to say thank you for saving his daughter’s life. The tears in his eyes when they saw each other in a military hospital the February after that Independence Day were more than enough for Billie. 

But it definitely didn’t hurt.

The heat was already soothing her so much more than the artificial pain relief of the meds. It wrapped around like a hug, but turned up to a thousand to her sensitised nerves. It seeped into the tightened scarred skin, muscles, tendons, scar tissue, screws, just metal, so much metal, all of it warmed over beneath where her hand was resting. It all opened up, slowly bleeding out the tension from where she had been bracing herself to prevent herself from vocalising the pain. 

The release was starting to make her finally feel the sleepiness that was sitting beneath her pain rise up in the tier of needs. It was likely already nearing four in the morning, she should probably just stay up, but she has a feeling that nothing will be able to happen today anyways. And the pain really knocked her out. 

_Real good justification there..._

Sleep swallows her alive once again regardless, clean, dry, and efficient.

===

Billie wakes up at 8:30 with a new glass of water, a cup of coffee and another Tylenol on her night table. She feels across the textured dial on her heating pad. The dial is turned to low, an obvious Stephie move. She was often concerned that the high setting was too high, that it would cause her to burn herself (like that really mattered in the current state Billie’s torso skin was in anyways). Billie also had to explain to her that she felt cooler internally than she did externally now. Just one more thing the Mind Flayer had taken from her, her temperature regulation was absolute shit.

In a way, it had been helpful last year, when Stephie was sweating, dripping, and highly unused to being without aircon during the heavy, humid midwestern summer. Sure, Billie felt a little warmer than normal, but it was nothing compared to what Stephie was going through. She was literally in tiny cotton shorts and a sports bra and was still too hot, looking like she was crawling out of her skin. Billie could see droplets running down the sunburnt skin of her upper chest to the line of her bra. She definitely didn’t miss that feeling. It did, however, make Billie feel a tiny bit bad for her; pretty little rich girl suffering through peasant summer for the first time. Not that Stephie ever talked about it that way, at least.

Didn’t stop her general complaining, though. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad…”

“Without the humidity, right?”

Stephie’s head flicks up to look at Billie, sat on their kitchen counter, the fan in her hand snapping shut before it stabs dismissively in her direction and thworps back open to fan herself in less than two seconds. Billie laughs around the mouthful of sun tea she had just sipped at Stephie’s faux indignance, and manages to keep herself from spraying it everywhere. There was no vindication behind any of it, all of that fire ironically sapped away by the heat. 

Billie slides off the counter and goes into their bedroom to set up the rotating fan in front of the window, day’s heat about to slide away into the evening chill as easy as it had rolled in that morning. Billie’s completely used to the song and dance, knows that it’s all so temporary, not like the hot dry heat that envelops California for months at a time. When she comes back to the living room to ask Stephie if she’s ready for a shower (knowing their bedroom will be plenty cooled down by the time they're done and ready for bed), Stephie looks so defeated.

“C’mon, sweetheart. It’s time.”

When Stephie takes her hand in hers, her skin is basically soggy with accumulated perspiration, and she’s surprised that it doesn’t bother her that much. When they get to the bathroom Billie basically has to wrestle her sports bra off with the way it sticks to her chest, stretchy synthetic fabric effectively suctioned onto her skin from the moisture. Stephie huffs her way through the whole process as her lanky arms are tilted and folded as necessary.

She just sits down cross legged on the floor of their shower, closes her eyes, and leans back for a minute, cold plastic and tile surrounding her obviously soothing against her warm skin. Billie shakes her head, a fondness growing in her eyes for a few seconds before she undresses quickly and steps in, too.

-

“Colder.”

“Drama queen.”

Stephie just huffs. Again.

“I was really fucking hot, Hargrove. I basically just cooked myself in a moist oven at 100 degrees for four hours like a fucking baguette.”

Billie doesn’t have a comeback for that, just turns the tap a quarter turn back to the cold side; she’s trying to ignore the feeling of her feet going numb when she goes to sit down on her knees in front of Stephie with the showerhead in her hands. 

Billie just clears her throat and continues to rinse the shampoo out of Stephie’s hair, combing her hands through the thick mass for a few moments. She presses her hand up along her scalp and gently pulls back, hair entwined between her fingers, intending to check her bangs and make sure she got everything. A surprised noise gets caught in Stephie’s throat at the movement, abrupt, and their eyes meet where her head is bent back. She looks… frustrated.

The showerhead gets dropped to the floor of the shower and Billie’s arms get wrapped around Stephie’s.

“Hey... I don’t know what I did but....” Billie always struggled to read the room when it was like this. Acting to get her way? No problem. But this? She was left floundering.

Stephie’s hand comes up to rest on Billie’s hip, and her forehead presses onto Billie’s shoulder. Firm, unwavering. Normally it’s about making as much contact as possible, wrapping as much of their bodies together as they can, hands running over each other's skin.

Moisture, warm, drops against her collarbones. And Stephie’s a sobber, she can really fucking **cry** her lungs out if she wants to, but this is silent. No sound, the only way Billie would be able to tell without the tears is how her breaths are stuttering in her chest under Billie’s hands. They just hold each other for a minute, cold water running along their thighs. 

When she does pull her head back, Billie does too, sliding her hands to her shoulders so Stephie can wipe at her face, lower mascara running even more than it was earlier.

“It’s not your fault, Billie. I’m just… stressed, I guess. And I don’t know how to make it better, or easier.”

Stephie had spent the past few weeks stressed out of her mind trying to get used to her new internship, and it hadn’t clicked yet for Billie that the two things were connected until now. Obviously spending hours in a hot bakery and then not having relief from it at home would wear on you. Stephie loves what she does, but since her lifetime of solid, unchanging normalcy came down on her in her senior year, change is rough on her bones. 

Billie gets it.

-

The rest of that hot week in August was spent camped out in their bedroom with a boxy window air conditioner, a piece from that year’s government settlement spent in seconds the next morning with zero hesitation on Billie’s part. 

(Stephie was so much more comfortable and it gave Billie more than enough excuses to tell her to “warm me up”. Well worth it, in the end.)

===

Billie’s starting to feel better with her pain level sitting fairly low now that she has enough pain reliever in her system and the day is winding down. She’s hobbled around, done some of her PT stretches a few times, ate at least one real meal, managed to get some copyediting on a script done for work, and stayed fairly hydrated. For her, this was one of her better flare ups. With them becoming less and less frequent and shorter in duration, the pain was starting to become nostalgic and less focused on the affliction itself. Because she was healed. She **is** healed. 

But reckoning this pain now, she fears, is more psychological than physical. Obviously she’s in actual pain too, she was nearly murdered by an interdimensional monster and survived by a hair’s width. But two and a half years on, the pain appears more now when she’s stressed about current life, or distressed about the past. It’s like she triggers it by being a shithead and not dealing with her hangups. And Billie hates that. 

It’s not that she’s all that angry or disfunctional anymore, it had taken a lot of work that first year for her to learn to accept help and accept love. But certain things, like her parents or the Upside-Down, they still hurt to deal with. And it hurts that there’s no easy answers for them. 

-

She’s laying on the couch, one arm wrapped around her middle and covered with a wonky crocheted blanket made by Max during one of her hobby phases. Their cat, Poe, is tucked up along her, kneading into it. It’s made with that super soft yarn that she can’t get enough of, and even Billie sometimes finds herself self-soothing with it too. 

She’s listening through Def Leppard’s Hysteria full album on repeat for at least the tenth time while editing for work, the stereo is at an offensively low volume that doesn’t provide the full impact of the music, but she **really** doesn’t want to get a headache so it’s a sacrifice she has to make. She almost thinks a silent “I’m sorry Joe” off to the lead singer, but stops. Because despite all of the nerd that’s rolled into her life over the past few years, she isn’t **that** bad yet.

Earlier she had absentmindedly stared at the cover on the cassette case for a while; the crazed amorphous people with their mouths open and teeth bared in pain as they’re swallowed in the darkness and neon lights around them.

The case gets shoved between the couch cushions. 

Billie takes a Tylenol PM and has a mid-afternoon nap that is thankfully painless and dreamless.

===

She’s chewing on the remnants of a cherry popsicle like a heathen when Stephie gets home. The popsicles are the real reason she’s still alive, not modern medicine or Upside-Down mysticism, just sugar, corn syrup, artificial cherry flavour, and red dye #40, blasting through her veins. 

When nausea would roil through her during early recovery the only thing that she could stomach was cherry popsicles. Back then she couldn’t finish them fast enough and the red would run down her fingers, sticky like blood when they pressed together. Nothing like the black liquid that ran like water from her wounds that night. That’s what they say saved her oxymoronically, the last remnants of the dying Mind Flayer advancing the healing process as she was the primary host. Just like when she was thrown through a brick wall and was able to walk away nearly unscathed.

She really didn’t care at all at the time, when the lab techs and Dr. Owens tried to explain their theory a few days after she came out of the coma. She just stared at her fingers, coated in cold, tacky, red across her eerily pale skin. Skin that didn’t look like hers. 

It always reminded her of cartoony blood from those cheesy old Hammer horror movies that her and Max would watch on nights when they were stuck at home together; Neil and Susan out on a “date night”. They featured a lot of busty vampires in corsets that were thirsty in more ways than one for Billie and just enough dramatic fights, carriage chases, and historical fashion to keep Max’s attention.

Back then she would've preferred to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Alien or even the ripped copy of Sleepaway Camp that she’d pilfered from a “friend” back out in California before she left, but they were still too much for Max at that age. Not that she hadn’t already watched TCM at Max’s age, but she was too sheltered.

To be fair, at this moment they were probably too scary for Billie, but not for Max. She hadn’t really tried. Hadn’t wanted to.

But they **definitely** wouldn’t be Stephie’s cup of tea.

“Bills, you hungry?” 

When Billie tilts her head back at Stephie’s voice and sees her coming around the corner out of the front hallway (and despite being upside down in this view), she’s radiant. Her hair is flat plaited into two little pigtails, her face tomato red with the cold December windburn, and she’s panting from the exertion of running up the seven flights of stairs to their apartment (impatiently unwilling to wait for the slow, rickety elevator in the back of the building). Billie just smiles at her for a second, before realising a question had been asked.

“Maybe…” She’s still currently sucking the remaining cherry flavour out of the wooden stick of her popsicle, oral fixation always searching out something since cigarettes were no longer an option.

“How about for Chinese food?” Stephie lifts up a brown paper bag into Billie’s line of sight with a lopsided grin, and the scent of the best egg rolls from their favourite Chinese place downtown hits her. If Billie wasn’t hungry before, she definitely is now. 

===

They eat together on the couch that night, legs twining together as they relax; Billie leaning back on propped up pillows because her upper core is sore, but thankfully not really in **pain** at the moment. 

A new Unsolved Mysteries drones in the background that they’re half paying attention to, it’s not a super interesting one for their tastes, just missing persons and run of the mill human on human murder. Billie prefers the historical mysteries far more, and Stephie gets strangely into the alien themed episodes (despite the fact that they know things far worse exist in the multiverse than little green men in B52s). Billie assumes that’s why Stephie likes them, something about the truth being stranger than fiction must be oddly comforting to her, too.

Billie manages to finish half of her noodles, and in her defense the portions at this place are **huge** , that’s normally why they both love it. Stephie looks between their containers for a second, stealing a shrimp out of Billie’s with nimble chopsticks. Billie pretends to be appalled and goes hide it away, making Stephie laugh, before holding it out again. Stephie gracefully plucks a snow pea pod from the mess of noodles and puts it in her mouth before bowing out to sit back against the couch again. This all happens without words, like some sort of Greek comedy played only for Robert Stack as he continues to drone.

Billie starts cleaning up, closing the takeout containers and putting them back into the bag for easy transport. She throws out the disposable chopsticks along the way, all about the planning and efficiency when she doesn’t feel her best. 

It’s like she can tell that it’s been too easy.

When she bends at the waist to swap her now chilled water bottle from the fridge with the leftovers, she yelps at the twist of red hot pain that runs through the muscle of her trunk and presses her lips firmly together to prevent it from escaping out again. She leans back against the edge of the fridge as she breathes, shallow, and presses the cold plastic of the bottle against her temple. She slides down the pebbled white plastic to the floor slowly as she again focuses on not hyperventilating, and she’s leaning forward a little bit, cupping her free arm around the area where the pain is concentrated. It helps, if only in her mind.

-

Stephie knows better than to try to baby Billie when she’s like this, if it’s not life threatening, she doesn’t rush over and immediately fret over her, trusting her to know her limits and communicate for help if she needs it. That was something both of them learned, together, in that first year. It led to more than a few spats, and still Billie can **feel** the worried expression cropping up in the space between Stephie’s eyebrows when she’s forced to sit back and wait.

It’s all because when Billie’s like this, in pain, or healing, or uncomfortable, or just **not right** , she often reacts like a wild animal, she always has. 

Even her father couldn’t beat that reaction out of her.

And she doesn’t want Stephie to get in the crossfire of that, when she lashes out. Not ever again.

So, instead of Stephie butting into her space or forcing her to immediately describe her discomfort (like the most horrible nurses used to), Stephie circles around the living room, doing her nightly dance for a little bit. It’s the cycle of turning off the tv and the extraneous lights while gathering up the little portable stereo and slinging her own bag onto her shoulder from where it got flung into the far corner of the couch when she got home. Every part of her flows in front of the line of white fairy lights that line their living room, the last source of light in the room, sinewy lank bending and turning as if she was a ballerina and their miniscule space together in this world, a stage.

It’s beautifully distracting.

Stephie doesn’t even realize it, how good she is for Billie.

The final “plie” lands her squatting down in front of Billie, a warm smile on her face. It’s not disingenuous, but Billie can still practically see the anxiety wrapping around her shoulders, tension broadening her swimmer’s build even more.

They don’t say anything, Stephie just brings her free hand up and wraps her hand around Billie’s. It’s a bit too tender for how vulnerable Billie feels right now but it shows to be purposeful as she pulls the bottle away from Billie’s temple and opens the spout, directing it towards Billie’s lips. A sigh buffets out as they part for the first time since the surprised cry sprang out a few minutes ago, but after a moment she takes it into her mouth anyways and drinks. Accepts it. 

Stephie just runs her thumb over Billie’s fingers where they’re still both holding on, her aura becoming more calming simply by being closer together. Billie takes a final mouthful and pulls her head back before solidly swallowing it down, watching Stephie’s eyes dart around at Billie’s throat. Billie’s panting again as she regains as much breath as possible. Stephie takes the bottle from her hands and tucks it into her bag, and Billie moves to transfer the cold condensation to her sweatpants, when she notices Poe has joined them in this odd configuration, pressed up along Billie’s thigh. 

And she had accidentally wiped some of the water along the fur of her back. 

Billie can’t keep her laugh in, nor the breathy, “Whoops, sorry, baby,” as Poe stands and bristles up at the moisture, flicking her tail.

Stephie looks down and it takes her a second to realize what happened, but when it hits her she laughs, too, spluttering out as she tries to talk over it. “Did you just apologise to our cat?” 

“You say that like you don’t do that every single morning when you nearly trip over her because you refuse to put on your glasses.” Billie can't keep herself from sticking her tongue out at Stephie as she finishes wiping off her hand and Stephie just rolls her eyes, pulls a dish towel from the handle of a nearby cabinet, and runs it over the little cat for a short moment, a smile cropping up. 

Quietly, comforting, “There you go, darling.”

Billie holds out her now dry hand for Poe’s inspection, and after a second of apprehension ebony fur is pressing itself into her palm. She can feel the purring beneath her hand, and it’s just so purely loving in that little bit of time, despite having literally just upset her, cold water being her worst enemy. Even more of an enemy than a closed door. She’s too forgiving, and Billie’s thankful for it. Always is. 

“Are you… ready? To head to the bedroom for tonight, I mean.” Warmth is radiating, round as she speaks, but it’s all so hushed and personal with them being so close. “I’m not sure this is the right time, but I do have a surprise for you that might take your mind off… things.”

Billie breathes in, brain turning on that but unable to land on a concrete guess what it could be. She shakes her head minutely to come back into herself and takes physical stock for the first time since her ass hit the floor. She should be able to get up and walk the distance if she can brace herself on Stephie’s side. Billie’s eyes meet Stephie’s and she nods, face blank, “Let’s go.”

===

They’ve been in bed for a while, probably close to an hour, when Billie can feel Stephie’s restlessness start to crop up, culinary magazine pages flipping faster, she’s not even attempting to read the articles at this point. Billie’s on her side with _Anna Karenina_ tucked into the curve of her arm, nearly halfway through so she’ll have to move soon so it doesn’t flop over onto her face. She’s facing away from Stephie, simply because it feels good to be in the fetal position curled around the heating pad that’s plugged in on her side of the bed and it makes her feel a little better, but she can tell it’s getting to Stephie.

The cassette in their deck, Journey’s Greatest Hits (a compromise), has been winding down to the end, Steve Perry crooning out _“You say she’s doing fine / I still recall / A sad cafe / How it hurt so bad to see her cry / I didn't want to say goodbye”_ into their dimly lit room. As the first chorus and second verse rolls through her, a lopsided grin breaks onto Billie’s face, and she’s suddenly glad that she’s faced away from Stephie so this can be a surprise.

As the chorus comes in again, she begins to sing.

“Send her, send her my looooove”

It comes out of her mouth without any hesitation, but a chuckle tucks itself down in her throat that she’s trying to restrain. 

“Memories remaaaain”

The magazine is thrown to the floor. 

“Roses never faaaaade”

The business card that’s acting as her bookmark is tucked in between the pages of _Anna_. She, too, gets thrown to the carpeted floor, with Billie’s heating pad.

“Calling out her name, I'm dreaming”

She feels a hand on her shoulder, and she rolls over onto her back, still babying her injury with her right arm wrapped around her, but she tries to be as theatrical as she can through it.

“Reflections of a face, I'm seeing”

Stephie’s beaming down at her from where she’s leaning over Billie, closed mouth grin so wide Billie thinks it couldn’t physically pull any further. 

“It's her voice, that keeps on haunting me”

Billie’s free hand travels up Stephie’s bare arm that’s bracing herself, and up, to cup at her cheek. It’s taut under her thumb and a quiet, breathy giggle emerges from Stephie at the tender contact, a blush spreading across her face. But still the eye contact doesn’t break for more than a second.

“Send her my love…”

Guitar and synth come together when they do, both smiling into the kiss. Billie’s struck by the need to roll her eyes at Stephie’s innocent romanticism, it’s all like something out of Pretty in Pink and they’re far beyond that together, but she can’t bring herself to do it. 

She just lets herself have it. 

No bullshit.

Send Her My Love fades out as their lips continue to slide together, and Billie makes it about ten seconds into the next song’s intro before she laughs directly into Stephie’s mouth and lets her head fall back to the pillow, before whacking her hand into the tape deck on the nightstand to skip it and to start Side B over. 

Stephie’s face screws up and she reaches over to skip back again, but Billie grabs her wrist, and uses her strength to pull her back more firmly on top of her lap.

“Compromise with me; Be Good To Yourself fucking sucks.” Billie’s eyebrow quirks up in challenge as she releases the other’s arm. 

She watches Stephie’s arm move like she was milliseconds from poking Billie in the sternum in retaliation, but then remembers and hesitates. And there it is. Staring her right in the face, texture evident even through the grey camisole that Billie’s wearing.

“Oh.”

Billie watches her expression roll around like a jar of marbles for a minute, before she reaches up and gently tugs at the plait hanging down in front of her like a toddler. Stephie just moves with it, a little grunt all that comes out. 

“It’s alright, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to start anything. It’s just a dumb song…”

Stephie just nods and gets up then, moving off of Billie to crawl down the bed. Billie doesn’t stop her, just watches. She plucks her bag off of the bedpost, and knees her way back up to sit down on them next to Billie. She digs around, with it being a backpack style purse it’s a **constant** mess but Stephie refuses to give it up because she loves the worn out leather and the convenience of it as she rides the L train everyday. In the end she wrestles a slightly crumpled, folded piece of paper from the bottom. It has tear away strips on the side.

“Earlier I said I didn’t know if this was the right time, like if I should wait for Christmas or something, but it definitely is.” 

Stephie hands them over, and Billie knows it’s tickets, they’re concert tickets, two paperclipped together. Billie scans the information as her eyes flick between them and Stephie’s face.

**Hysteria World Tour**  
**Def Leppard**  
**Opening Acts: Europe & Loverboy**  
**Springfield, Illinois**  
**13 July 1988**

“I won them earlier this week, some sort of holiday giveaway on 97.1, the guys at the bakery helped me out with calling in... So, uh, if it ends up not being in the cards by then with your pain, no harm no foul financially for us. I just… really wanted you to know. Because it’s important, and I don’t really do the “keeping secrets” thing anymore.” Her hands come up, and make the air quotes emphatically as she speaks.

Billie nods, unsure what to say knowing what she does, so she just bends up to a sitting position. Stephie patiently puts her hand on Billie’s back to help, literally, physically, supporting her. The twist of her obliques while moving towards the bedside table is what does make a tiny spark of pain run across her ribs, but it’s more than manageable for the three whole seconds it takes for her to dig out the crisp, white envelope in the second drawer and hand it off to Steph. She scoots back up against the headboard to watch, her own hand coming up to thumb at her jaw and slightly hide the growing grin on her face.

Stephie pulls everything out at once, and her mouth falls into a small, inadvertent “o” as she reads the first set of papers in it before shifting them slightly to read the two slightly larger pieces of paper behind them.

**The Raised on Radio Tour**  
**Journey**  
**Opening Acts: The Outfield w/ Andy Taylor of Duran Duran**  
**2 July 1988**  
**San Diego, CA**

And two plane tickets, spaced out a day before and three days after the concert for arrival and departure, round trip, ORD ⇉ SAN ⇉ ORD.

“You fucker, always trying to upstage me.” But Stephie’s laughing as she crowds into Billie’s space, and that makes Billie laugh, too. Stephie embraces her carefully but tenderly, putting all the pressure up around her shoulders for a moment, before she starts pressing a few errant kisses into her neck.

“Mmm, when they came in I tried to think of a speech for this that was better than “Happy Anniversary” when our anniversary isn’t until February or “Surprise, my yearly hush money came in a few weeks early!” but I’m thinking “Let's make some good July memories this year” is as good as it’s gonna get...” 

Billie’s hands press up around Stephie’s middle as she talks, pulling out the button-up that’s tucked into her high waisted jeans and starts to slowly unbutton it, white undershirt and midnight blue bra straps gradually revealing in the soft light. Stephie holds for a second, and Billie sharply inhales at the sharp suctioning feeling at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, breathy laughter escaping while her knee lifts up towards Stephie’s body, a bit of pleasure running across her still sensitised nervous system.

When Stephie does pull away a moment later, open lapels of her shirt flutter as she moves back, and she shucks the shirt off her shoulders, like it’s nothing more than a swimsuit coverup and she’s about to jump off into the deep end. She stacks all six tickets together emphatically and slides them back into the envelope, putting them into the open bedside drawer for safekeeping. 

“I can’t wait to sit on that beach with you, in Coronado.”

Stephie laughs at the slight bewilderment in Billie’s eyes and then Billie understands, “You saw right through me with that delayed departure date, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes, I did. Always have, it was a good idea.” Her head nods along as she speaks, “Should be no problem to get the time off, the guys always clamber for time and a half on holidays.”

“Yeah, well. I figured it was a good idea to have a little recovery time after the concert just in case… Though I don’t think Journey will have too much moshing…”

Stephie just chuckles and slaps a hand across Billie’s bare shoulder.

-

“Y’know what they say about living for tomorrow?”

“Mhmm… I do. I lived it for three years, in fact. And now we’re here.”

Stephie nods, edges of her eyes softening, but the smile doesn’t leave her face.

“We’re here. So what do you actually want, now?”

Billie debates it for a moment, runs her eyes up and down the other before landing on where they’re connected, warmth fusing together at their laps where Stephie is perched on her.

“Honestly...” She pauses to swallow because the saliva collecting in her mouth makes her feel like a dog, she’s fucking Pavloved herself just thinking about it, “I just want you to sit on my face and make me forget that I’ve ever been in pain.”

Stephie’s eyes laser focus in, slightly squinting in conflict between compassion and arousal at Billie’s words. 

Billie’s hands move up from where they were resting on Stephie’s thighs to loop her pointers in the centermost belt loops and pull forward, not to actually move her, but to put pressure there, to hint. The involuntary canting of her hips against it surprises Stephie, and her hands get thrown up onto Billie’s shoulders to try to keep her balance. Billie releases the loops and moves inwards, pulling the zipper down and popping the button before tucking her hand into the slot between where the plane of Stephie’s hip meets tight denim. She thumbs the waistband on her underwear, dipping beneath and rubbing slow, firm circles along the little dent line in the skin left behind by the elastic.

“I.. uh…” Stephie clears her throat and shakes her head a little bit, “I can… If that’s what you really want… I think I can make it happen.”

And Billie, she does really want that. 

She’s wanted it all day, since she woke up, throbbing pain wrapping around her torso like an electrified vice. She’s wanted it since she was laying in that hospital bed the August after, the other sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs along the wall with her knees tucked up against her chest, pretending that she was engrossed in a soap opera on the TV in the corner when in actuality she was intensely watching tinted liquid drain into Billie’s veins. She’s wanted it since she rolled up to Hawkins High that October morning and saw her leaning on that pretentious BMW, her own ribs still bruised and healing from the beating that made them move two thousand miles halfway across the country. 

There hasn’t been a time since then that she hasn’t. 

Their mouths meet again, teeth clacking together for the first time in a long while because they both go in for the “passion”, instead of letting the other lead. When Stephie clambers back onto her lap like she never left, it intensifies the pressure and makes Billie groan out her approval.

A few moments later, Billie breaks the kiss to breathe, but Stephie’s mouth just moves to drag along her jawline to keep that contact, not really kissing anymore but just touching. Same with how her chapped, windburnt lips press around the shell of her ear and force Billie to **shiver**.

“Lay down.” 

And in spite of the hushed whisper, it’s direct, an instruction. No pausing or “Um"s or “Maybe…"s. While Billie would normally fight it, she’s feeling pliant and happy despite the ups and downs of today. 

And, mostly, because Stephie thinking she’s in control will get Billie what she wants faster. 

So she does, Stephie widening her thighs and letting Billie slide down between, a smirk following her. She sits down onto Billie’s lower stomach as she pulls the pillow back beneath Billie’s head, smile turning sweet as she bends down and Billie reaches up, pulling the little elastics off the end of Stephie’s plaits and untwining them. Stephie sits up straight and brings her hands into her hair, shaking it out with a twin shake of her hips and it makes Billie laugh, a step away from a giggle.

Stephie looks exhilarated at this development, while Billie rolls her eyes with her own little head shake, “C’mon, off,” she says, grabbing onto the open panels of the fly on Stephie’s jeans like they’re reins and dropping her voice, “Stop teasing me.”

And Stephie, she looks right on the edge of desperate for contact and desperate to tease Billie even more. So it’s a pleasant surprise when she just clambers off, shucks off her jeans and underwear in a single move and jumps back up on the bed, tank top hitting her at the very tip top of her thigh. Billie’s struck with need to lick along that line so badly, more than anything else, but she restrains herself and lets Stephie keep doing her dance. 

Stephie also flips on the lamp on the nightstand because it’s too dim for her preference, and despite everything, on top of being a pleaser, she’s also a watcher by nature, a “soak up every minute and every inch of skin that’s allowed to her” type of person. 

Billie can relate.

While she sits beside Bilie’s hip for a minute, she toys with the drawstrings that sit below Billie’s belly button, fingertips occasionally grazing on the soft skin and faint blonde hairs there.

“Can I… I’m not gonna…” And Billie’s tilting her hips up away from the bed, no hesitation, and lets the fleece sweatpants get pulled down her legs. She ends up kicking them off her right foot when she gets impatient, holding her hands out for Stephie. She isn’t naked beneath them for once, there’s a pair of red boxer briefs that are tight around the muscle of her upper thigh, and that’s where Stephie wraps her right hand around when she comes up. 

“Can’t believe everyone thinks I’m the needy o-”

Billie’s hands wrap around her face and pull her down, making her kiss her deep and hard. Her left hand slides down Stephie’s body to her thigh, where she’s just all bare skin, rubbing at that line that she wanted to lick earlier with rough fingers. She tilts her fingers up and skim along rapidly heating flesh, lighter than a feather, to Stephie’s inner thigh and pinches the skin there. A surprised jolt makes her legs close around Billie’s hand, but Billie smiles when she doesn’t release it as they continue to lick into each other’s mouths. Billie wiggles her hand against the imprisonment, managing to free her pointer press it along and into the fleshy crease where leg meets pelvis, and her smile grows into a smirk at how Stephie bucks down into the teasing. She leans her head back into the pillow to look up at her after Stephie downright **whines** into the other’s mouth.

“There, proof you’re the needy one,” Her right hand taps at Stephie’s flushed face, gently, pressing a tiny kiss to the tip of her nose, “Now, please, finally, sit on my face.”

-

The feeling of Stephie carefully climbing over her chest, newborn deer limbs somehow everywhere but also incredibly mindful of every movement so as not to inadvertently cause her more pain is something Billie thinks she’ll remember on her deathbed. 

And also the way Stephie actually screamed through her fifth orgasm on Billie’s tongue that night, her hands so intensely wound up in Billie’s hair beneath her that the next morning her **scalp** hurts far more than her chest.

She doesn’t want to forget that pain, because it’s a **good** pain. A throbbing reminder of something that truly matters, something that brought her real happiness in this fucked up lifetime.

-

That next morning, while they're curled up together under the duvet, warm and comfortable, Stephie’s hands run over Billie’s head, handfuls of fingers pressing in between her curls and soothe as apologetically as she can. Those same long fingers press into Billie's center, slowly, as the sun emerges out of the darkness and Stephie gets later and later for work, with no regret at all. They pull so much pleasure out of deep down inside her that she swears Stephie plucks her soul out and leaves it on her chest, right where her camisole is rucked up and Stephie’s freehand is splayed out firmly against the largest scar on her body. 

No hesitation, no fear. 

All love.

=== 

Billie feels better than ever, come summer. Flareups are becoming rare being just days shy of the three year mark, and that means Def Leppard isn’t an obstacle to fight through pain just to experience, it’s a reward. A reward for her resilience. 

They dress up, Stephie teasing her hair out for the second time in her life and wears her leather pants that cup around her ass in a way that makes Billie absolutely drool all night.

And they do sit on that beach, together, thighs pressed up against each other and SPF 50 spread all over every exposed inch of Stephie’s skin. 

On their last night in California, 4th of July 1988, they watch fireworks explode over San Diego Bay from the balcony outside their hotel room for a little bit. And Billie’s good, she really is, with Stephie’s arm wrapped around her shoulders and their backs pressed against the door, ocean waves a few floors beneath their feet almost louder than the boom of the fireworks in the distance. 

She feels truly **safe**.

She may not be perfectly healed yet, and she knows in her heart she never will be completely without her trauma, or without her pain. It’s a part of her being. 

But that little carved out space for good among the bad, that's the bit that makes it all worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this idea came to me last month after experiencing my first chronic pain flareup while being with my current gf while also consuming some of the /incredible/ fem harringrove content in this fandom (if you write/draw them i would genuinely die for you, no questions asked), and. and just... billie’s gonna be rough for a long while after what she experienced. and there’s the whole issue of your body still being weak even after the person is of sound mind (and libido)… it all just seems underexplored in the “billy survived through physical recovery” side of the fixits so i was compelled :) And the little bit of nonexp smut is the highly unrelatable prompt that laney and i outlined of "what is it abt being incapacitated after an injury that just makes me want someone to sit on my face and give me something to concentrate on that isn't my pain?" lmao. i wish i was a better porn writer, but i am not, so i hope this style wasn't too distracting. 
> 
> \---
> 
> And a storytime bc it’s highly related! 
> 
> While I did have to fudge the dates on the Journey tour to work for the timeline of this fic (unimportant), my parents (mother and stepdad) actually both went to the Hysteria World Tour separately in Summer 1988 when he was 20 and she was 23. They didn’t even know each other yet and wouldn’t meet for another decade. (It was the sold out, tiny 8K person show in LaCrosse, the day before the one in Springfield I had B&S go to if you care!) Evidently it was fucking insane, like there was an in-depth laser show with tons of pyrotechnics (which is like, ridiculously 80s imo, but so on brand for Def Leppard) and one of the roadies did coke off of one of the subwoofer things during the show and Phil Collen kicked him in the ass as he did it while also playing guitar and powder went flying. (I’m just personally glad I wasn’t alive in the 80s because I’m weak as fuck and I’m sure I’d be fucking DEAD. Just dead, lmao) 
> 
> But seriously, it’s really the one thing I love about Stranger Things taking place in Nowhere Indiana, I get to use my insider vintage Midwestern Gothic knowledge to my advantage for once in my life!
> 
> \---
> 
> thank you for reading, seriously! i write for the small slice of any fandom that enjoys the same stuff i do so if you made it this far i hope you loved it! 💙 
> 
> \---
> 
> pixielle22 - twitter | pixielle / pixielle-etc - tumblr


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